Biking in Southern Tarui

It’s funny because I know that I only have one year in Japan.  Like I have already mentioned, already a quarter of my time here is over.  I know I should look at the glass three quarters full, as the saying goes, but I have this constant voice in my head that tells me that I should be travelling more and seeing all of Japan.  Besides, I’m only here for this year.  I should make the most of it.

But to be honest, on the weeknights it gets dark just before 5:00 (I am thankful that there was no time change this fall or it would begin to get dark around 3:45) and on the weekends I have felt tired from work from the week before.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have gone on the occasional daytrip to go to Ogaki (a neighbouring city) or I’ve gone to Nagoya to meet up with friends to go shopping or go clubbing Friday or Saturday night (which has been awesome!  I will try to take some pictures and post them in another blog post), but again, there’s that voice in the back of my head saying, “You should be visiting the historical sites in Japan, not just going to the cities to go shopping or for entertainment.”

So last weekend I went on a very long bike ride on Saturday and I went on a short bike ride on Sunday (I had a meeting Sunday morning which I will explain later) around Tarui.  Just a quick reminder in case you don’t know, Tarui is the town I’m living in.  I was thinking if I was too tired to travel to the wonderful places all over Japan, I would bike around Tarui and discover what this town had to offer for it’s citizens like myself.  I was pleasantly surprised (as I am usually when I have to bike somewhere new in Tarui).  I always seem to discover a shrine or a Temple Bell or something astounding on my bike rides when I try a different, new path.  The past weekend was no exception.  So for the next two blogs, I am planning to post some pictures of the town I am living in; Tarui. 

I must apologize in advance because to be honest, I was simply biking around and taking pictures of the wonderful sites that I saw that weekend.  I was following a map, but I still don’t know what many of the sites or temples are called. And unfortunately I don’t know the historical significance of many of these sites, but anything that was out of the ordinary I took a picture of.  I hope you will appreciate these pictures, too, even though I can’t offer a short explanation or even a name to many of these sites.  But I hope you enjoy these pictures anyway.  Perhaps in the future I will add more information once I know the name of these places.

For this post, I will post pictures of the Southern part of Tarui town that I explored.  And keep in mind that I may have missed some other sites in southern Tarui, but this is what I saw on my five hour bike ride Saturday afternoon.

So let’s begin with a picture of myself during my journey…or a picture that I took of myself as best I could.  It is still sunny in Tarui (unlike in Canada at the moment I hear) and that’s why I was able to take a picture of my shadow, but you have to keep in mind it’s getting almost unbearably windy.  I think my bike ride would have been less than 5 hours if it wasn’t so windy.  Oh well, I guess I got more exercise that day!

Here are some pictures of the beginning of my journey:

The next couple of shots are about a block away from my house!

I was looking for a special site with 100 small Buddha stones, but instead I found myself hiking on the side of a mountainside in a cemetery.  Cemeteries are everywhere in Japan (even one block away from my house).  It’s funny, normally in Canada I thought I would never want to live near a cemetery…the thought used to give me chills.  And the sad thing is I don’t really have any reason to explain why I would never want to live near a graveyard.  (Did I mention I like horror movies?  That’s probably why I have this irrational and illogical idea that I would never want to live near a cemetery; one too many silly zombie movies.  But to quote a young character from the movie “The Crow” when she was found in the graveyard sleeping against a headstone, “A graveyard is the safest place to be.  Everybody’s dead!”)  Anyway, again, I digress. 

The last thing I’ll say is I’m sorry if I seem strange that I am posting pictures of the tombs, cemeteries and graveyards in Japan.  They have a certain beauty to them and are different then in Canada.  I know I know, first the bugs, and now I have a thing with graves.  I’m a strange girl.  Here are the pictures:

I was surrounded by bamboo forest!

This isn't the mountain-side cemetery, but it's a cemetery that I saw later on that day.  It's just part of the street beside a house.  Many cemeteries are like this in Japan.  They can be found everywhere!

So as I was climbing the mountain with the tombstones around me, a strange thing happened.  You know how in the movies the characters in old scary movies get caught in a spider-web and it seems as though they are caught in a net?  I used to laugh to myself and think that they were being over dramatic because spider-webs are so soft and delicate and easy to rip.  I chalked it up to the over-acting you see in older movies.  HA!  I was wrong! 

As I was hiking, I ran into only one or two strings of a spider-web, and I actually got close-lined!  I thought I ran into a thick thread or even a fishing line or something.  But, no, I looked behind me and I saw a couple of huge garden spiders frantically climbing up the larger section of their web.  I took this as a sign to leave the cemetery.  It’s kind of funny because a couple of seconds before I ran into the spider-web I was thinking to myself that perhaps I should leave the cemetery because maybe I was being disrespectful since I had no one to visit.  BAM, I got attacked by a spider-web!  So I took it as a sign and I decided to leave.  But not before taking a picture of the spiders.  THIS IS THE FIRST AND LAST PICTURE OF A BUG IN THIS BLOG…I PROMISE!  (And by blog, I mean this one post…I can’t make any promises.  Besides, I might see a millipede one day and that would be ultra cool to take a picture of!  Unless it was in my house, then I want it out.  Yuck!)  Anyway, I finally got a decent picture of these huge “garden” spiders, so here it is:

After leaving the graveyard and peeling off the web that was left on my jacket, I decided to go to a nearby convenient store and pick up an ice tea or something.  Look what I found:

Yes, that’s a pink, strawberry flavoured pepsi.  Weird.  Did I try it?  No.  I was too thirsty to start experimenting with my beverages.  But I will try this “strawberry flavoured” pepsi one day!  I bet it tastes like cream soda or ice cream!

Anyway, back to the pictures:

I was going to take a picture of the Nanju Shrine, which is probably the most famous shrine in Tarui.  But a couple things stopped me.  First, I already have pictures of it.  

  

Next, there was an event happening at the shrine and I didn’t want to disturb anyone.  I saw a family walk out and then I realized this was a yearly event in Japan that I’ve heard of.  On November 15^th, the 3, 5, and 7 year old girls get dressed up in a Kimono.  Again, I feel bad that I don’t know the name of this event or anymore details, but that’s the jist of it.  Here is a picture of one of the families walking from the shrine.  The little one wearing the Kimono was about 3 years old.  She was adorable!!

After biking past the Nanju Shrine, I had a huge hill to climb.  But I kept going because my map said that there was this beautiful temple.  At one point I paused on the hill and took a picture of the Fuwa High School:

Man, the map said this High School is close to an Athletic Park and this magnificent temple.  But where was this temple?  I was getting tired because it was getting late and I was biking all day and I saw nothing but hill.  I could see the park up ahead but where was the darn temple.  I was about to give up…and then I saw this tower of a temple in the distance.  How could I have possibly missed it?  It was this really tall temple right in front of me, towering over the park.  It looked amazing, even in the distance!  Here is a picture from that point:

Wow, this picture doesn't do justice to what I saw that day at the top of the hill.  Oh well.  I guess you'll have to visit me in Japan to see this sight yourself;-)

 Here are more pictures of the temple.  This was definitely worth biking up that giant hill!

Here are pictures of the athletic park.  This is where Tarui Pia Festival was held.  There were many kids playing soccer, tennis, baseball, and other sports in this park.  Many people were walking their dogs, too.  And you have to check out the picture of the giant slide!  Nice!

In the southern part of Tarui, there are the Shinkanzen tracks.  I just had to catch the Shinkanzen on video as it went by.

So, I decided to end my journey with a bit of a treat for dinner.  I went to Guruman’s bakery and here are a couple of pictures.  What a lovely way to end an excellent day!

Now, in the next post, I will be writing about the following day, Sunday.  I went to the Melbourne Club meeting and then I went on a short, two to three hour bike ride around Western Tarui.  It’s funny that I am so worried that I am not seeing Japan and that I have this nagging voice in my head saying how I should be travelling around Japan more.  After this weekend, I realized that there is so much beauty in all of Japan, including the town I live in.  Thank you, Tarui.